1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a handling system, a work system, and a program for selectively picking up a plurality of conveyed articles.
2. Description of the Art
A handling system for detecting workpieces conveyed by a conveyer by a visual sensor and selectively picking up the detected workpieces by a robot is known. Japanese Patent Publication (A) No. 2005-111607 discloses a tracking system for capturing images of workpieces on a conveyer, detecting positions of the workpieces at the time of the imaging from the captured images and specifying the positions of the workpieces at the present point of time from the amount of movement of the conveyer after that. In this tracking system, an image processing system stores position data of the workpieces at the time of the imaging and measurement values of a pulse coder for measuring the movement of the conveyer at the time of the imaging in correspondence. The stored position data of the workpieces at the time of the imaging is transferred from the image processing apparatus to a robot controller. The robot controller searches for and acquires the measurement values of the pulse codes related to the position data of the workpieces using the position data of the workpieces as a key. Then, it rearranges the position data of workpieces from the downstream side based on the position data of the workpieces and the measurement values of the pulse coder and assigns the workpieces to a plurality of robots from the workpieces on the downstream side among the plurality of workpieces for handling.
Japanese Patent Publication (A) No. 2005-111607 performs processing such as specifying which workpieces are located on the downstream side and specifying the positions of the workpieces at the present point of time by uniformly managing the position data of all workpieces and searching for the data related to the position data. Accordingly, the data of the workpieces cannot be efficiently processed.
For example, when a plurality of workpieces are captured in a single image, the measurement values of the pulse coder become the same for the plurality of workpieces, but the same measurement value is retrieved and specified for each workpiece, therefore the same processing is executed overlappingly. The search of the measurement value of the pulse coder and the rearrangement of the position data must be carried out for all workpieces including workpieces relatively upstream from the robot, therefore the processing load unnecessarily increases. It is difficult to provide the user with additional information of the workpieces (for example the type of the workpieces) for a predetermined range on the conveyer.